Niantic History Special: The Cassandra Anomalies Part Three

Good afternoon, Agents and Investigators! My name is Mustafa Said and welcome back to the Niantic History coverage of the Cassandra Anomalies.

So let’s begin with the Anomalies that struck Manila, The Philippines on August 18th, 2013.

When Measurement One hit, here’s what the scores looked like:

And as Measurement Two approached, The Resistance kept their foothold on the Anomaly

Finally, at Measurement Three it was the Resistance who claimed Manila:

I had the opportunity to interview Joanne Ranada, Resistance Agent @TheUnicorn in scanner, about her experiences during the Anomaly with some of her friends:

When you discovered that your area was getting an anomaly, how did your faction plan for it?

ArginusPrime: We created a temporary community where the plans were discussed and updates were posted. We planned for both the movements of the ground agents in the Clusters (which we further divided into Sectors) and the mega field to enclose the Clusters too.

Whizzard: The plan was that we could field within the clusters prior to the checkpoint, bring up the huge field over the entire area, then use a Jarvis virus to take it down so our field agents could field within clusters again, rinse and repeat.

jeprox: We chilled….drank beer most of the time.

Sparkrush: We had the right keys at the right time. And countless farming nights followed by strategy-planning and beer.

TheUnicorn: All agents gathered every night each week and farmed, farmed, farmed.

cydoki: We sent out a notice through our community at G+ looking for volunteers and requested Area Leads, to spread the news through their Hangout. Good thing we got a lot of volunteers, so agent wise it wasn’t a problem. And also, farm, farm, farm. Everyday, every time we thought of farming we got out and built farms.

ArginusPrime: When the Resistance mega field was taken down minutes after the first checkpoint and replaced with a bigger Enlightened control field. I was in the Batangas vertex of the mega field and was recharging my phone inside the tourism office building when the field went down and it started to rain heavily. I was like: “I have a bad feeling about this”. Headed back to Manila through the storm when the team has confirmed that we do not have Agents to mobilize to neutralize the Enlightened mega field.

Whizzard: The Enlightened mega field put that plan into a screeching halt.

jeprox: About 60% of the time…all the time…..

Stryderr: Initially, the field we made blocked their plans so they had to do something about it. But we were more determined and organized.

Sparkrush: I was assigned to create a covering field over area. Relaxed a bit when that went up but then got destroyed in the 1st 5 minutes of the hour and the suddenly the green field went up. Fortunately, our field was counted for the 1st measurement so that gave us an edge already.

Eugene: Personally felt we already had a solid hold on the anomaly.

TheUnicorn: When they destroyed our megafield. But we were concentrated on the portal clusters to even worry about that. We had more than enough ground agents to give the faction leverage.

cydoki: When the green megafield went up, we were thinking, that’s 50 points right there. But looking at the number of ground agents they had at the site at that time, we just focused on getting all the volatiles and capturing as many of the portals we can. We had more ground agents anyway.

paraluman: Existence of spoofers.. but I strongly believed in the intelligence of the masterminds of our faction. I didn’t have the slightest doubt about what factionmates can do to win the anomaly. Our awesomeness were very evident from planning to execution.

What are your overall thoughts that you took away from the anomaly?

ArginusPrime:Bring as many power banks as you can when traveling outside Manila. You’re bringing 10? Bring some more! The low reception signal puts stress on the phone to use more battery power.

Whizzard: It was a lot of fun! some people from both sides take this game way too seriously and it was nice for the majority of us to hang out, cooperate towards a common goal and just have fun. i think some agents forget to have fun, which is what any game is all about, if you think about it

jeprox: Wet.

Stryderr: Heart, dedication and irreplaceable memories. I guess the most important thing is that you always have fun and believe in your teammates. That helps you overcome any obstacle.

Sparkrush: Clear comm lines and an easy-to-execute strategy are essential for smooth transition between combat stances.

Eugene: Numbers matter. Excelling in inviting friends, developing newbies into leaders, and maintaining an enjoyable playing environment for your faction is crucial

TheUnicorn: We were in the middle of a storm that day but everyone showed up. I think it was the bond of friendship, cooperation, support and most of all, preparation that made a big difference.

cydoki: I was happy. Never before did so many resistance agents gather in one place. And it was a lot of fun, running all over the place capturing portals left and right.

paraluman:Cling wraps.

What do you think Cassandra was about?

ArginusPrime:Operation Cassandra was an attempt to save Cassandra from certain death. She still died in the end though. X( At its time, it was the biggest Ingress event too where an XM Anomaly was done on a global scale so it’s also about getting the whole world collaborate to achieve an objective.

Whizzard: I actually have no idea. Who is this Cassandra person anyway?

jeprox: No idea. Who was Cassandra?

Stryderr: I dont know who or what Cassandra is all about.

Eugene: Story-wise, it was about the character Cassandra right? Gameplay-wise, it was an opportunity for teammates to work together in another level, and for a unique objective

TheUnicorn: There was a Cassandra character in the storyline but it was a very minor role. Then the objective of controlling global power centers, I think, was one of the ways for which Niantic would be able to see and study the impact of global anomaly participation (this was the first anomaly here in Manila).

cydoki: Not really sure.

paraluman: Glyphs, Jarvis’ plans, death of (who’s that woman again?), way to 13Magnus

Operation #Cassandra then moved to Paris, France on August 20th, 2013:

When Measurement One struck, The Enlightened took the lead:

And as Measurement Two rolled in, The Enlightened kept control:

And as the final Measurement came in, the Enlightened had succeeded in claiming the city:

Now the Anomaly moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil. The date: August 21st, 2013:

Measurement One looked like this:

And Measurement Two continued the trend:

And finaly, the last measurement showed who managed to come out on top:

And finally, the last Anomaly before the big finale was staged in Hong Kong, China, on August 22nd, 2013:

Measurement One showed a surge from the Resistance as they claimed the measurement:

And Measurement Two was no different:

And finally, the Resistance managed to pull a victory in the end:

I had the chance to interview Hilda Leung, Resistance Agent @halette in scanner and one of the leader of the Hong Kong Resistance who fought in the Anomaly:

Mustafa: First question, When you discovered that your area was getting an anomaly, how did your faction plan for it?

Hilda: We started out gathering troops and intelligence. From there, we pictured all sorts of scenarios and formulated our overall strategy.

Mustafa: My second is, At what point did you feel like the ENL could gain the upper hand?

Hilda: I was on the ground when an EN CF covered the entire Hong Kong during measurement 1. All I could tell my team was to focus on the portals within our reach and do our part.

Mustafa: What are your overall thoughts that you took away from the anomaly?

Hilda: Together we can achieve great things. Running around the city with hundreds of strangers could be more fun and less crazy than it sounds :D

Mustafa: What do you think Cassandra was about?

Hilda: To the storyline it was probably just a prelude. To me it was a test on how strong our community was — and we had what it takes to win: individual commitment, transparent leadership and thorough planning. To Niantic it was a fruitful capacity test — they successfully stressed out and broke the servers at measurement 2.

I also interviewed Wyman Wong, Resistance Agent @BlackAgentX in scanner and Investigator over at Operation Essex, as well:

Mustafa: First question, When you discovered that your area was getting an anomaly, how did your faction plan for it?

Wyman: I remembered when we received that our city will be an anomaly site, we started to plan for it for the anomaly. Since the time we have is just a month, we have planned to have CF team which will create a CF covers the entire cluster, Intel team for monitoring the Intel map and also ground teams with different roles. Also, we have organized some pre-ops team which turn the portals inside the cluster blue before measurement. Although the time is so tight for us to plan and even we have meetings overnight, but it was fun and had a good result.

Mustafa: Second question, At what point did you feel like the ENL could gain the upper hand?

Wyman: At the first measurement, an ENL field has covered the entire cluster over Hong Kong, we are so worried about the field will last until the end of the anomaly because they contributed with other cities agent for the field. But luckily there were RES agents just next to the portal so we can clear it and even we link back a big blue field to cover back the whole cluster.

Mustafa: Third question, What are your overall thoughts that you took away from the anomaly?

Mustafa: Anomalies are focused on teamwork and participation. Anything that happens in the anomaly needs teamwork. For me, teamwork is the key leading us to win in game, and even in our career or study.

Mustafa: Final question, what do you think Cassandra was about?

Wyman: For me, Cassandra was about shaper glyphs, and XM. At that time, Shapers and Jarvis are discovered in portals and want to control the human using glyphs and it was dangerous for humans if the glyphs are in some sequence. For XM, although XM can somehow affect human beings but I think XM is not really that dangerous for us to discover XM and even using it in our daily life.

#Cassandra is about to end….

Tune into DeCode Ingress to find out what happened next in Niantic History!